Reading The Lightning ThiefThe Philly Chronicles
by Artimis99
Summary: Percy has a younger sister, Philomeda-Enyo "Philly" Jackson. When Philly, Percy, Annabeth, Thalia and Nico are sent back in time to read the books, secrets are revealed. And there's a special prophecy for Philly? And what's with Nico and Philly? Do they like each other? Philly/Nico OC/Nico. Percy and Annabeth are 19, Nico and Philly are 15. Set when Thalia turns into a tree.


**Hey guys! It's Artimis with a story! Hope you enjoy!**

**Philly and Nico are 15, Percy and Annabeth are 19.**

**I will also point out that I suck with pickup lines, so can you send me some for the gods to use on Philly? Thanks.**

**I don't own PJO, I do own Philomeda-Enyo Jackson.**

The gods were eating ambrosia, when suddenly they heard screams.

"Ahhhhh!" Demigods crashed into the ground.

"Well that hurt," one said. All except for one scrambled when they heard another scream.

"Ahhhhhhhh!" A girl yelled as she fell right on top of the boy who stayed there, who made an "Oomph" sound. She sat up looking around.

The girl was tall, about five feet and nine inches. Her hair was jet black, but had neon green and electric blue streaks in it with a gray part in the front. She was tan, and her eyes were a curious sea green.

"Angel, can you get off of me? Your arm is burying itself into my side." The boy under her muttered.

"Oops, sorry Nico." She got up and he used his arms to sit up- right as a book fell on his head.

"WHY ME?" He yelled. The girl helped him up and they turned to the gods.

"Who are you?" The gods asked.

"You mean-you didn't summon us?" A boy identical to the girl asked.

"If we don't know who you are, how can we summon you?" Athena asked.

"True that," the girl said.

"Wait, Nico, there's a note on the book." A blonde girl pointed out. The raven-haired girl took the book from the boy.

_Dearest Olympians,_

_I have sent these five demigods back in time to read with you their adventures. I have no idea why, I just did. Each time a book is finished, I will send the next to fall on Nico's head. These are the stories of Perseus and Philomela-Enyo Jackson. They are told from the point of view of Philomela-Enyo._

_Please do not smite them._

_~Apollo_

"Well then, I'm Philomela-Enyo Jackson, but if you call me that, I will rip you to shreds. People call me Philly."

"Didn't that boy just call you Angel?" Zeus asked.

"Nico's the only one allowed to call her that." The Philly-look a like stated. "I'm Percy Jackson, Philly's big bro."

"I'm Annabeth Chase, Percy's girlfriend."

"I'm Thalia Grace, best friend of these wackos." She said pointing at the boy and Philly and Percy.

"I resent that!" Philly shouted.

"And I'm Nico DiAngelo, Philly's best friend."

"Okay, who wants to read first?" Hera asked. Philly raised her hand.

"Me, please." She took of the note and looked at the book.

**_~PHILLY POINT OF VIEW~_**

I looked at the title.

"Philly and Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief"

"Hey, why's your name first?" Percy whined.

"Because I'm better looking. Now shut your mouth or I'll shut it for you." I threatened.

**"We Accidentally Vaporize My Brother's Pre-Algebra Teacher," **I read.

"How do you- you know what? I don't wanna ask," Annabeth said. I just smirked.

**Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.**

"Why not? It's awesome," Apollo said.

"Apollo, you're a god." I said.

"Then you're a goddess," he winked. I growled and he flinched.

"Don't. Flirt. With. Me."

**If you're reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is:**

**Close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.**

**Being a half-blood is dangerous. It's scary. Most of the time, it gets you killed in painful, nasty ways.**

"Sadly, that's the truth." Percy sighed.

**If you're a normal kid, reading this because you think its fiction, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened.**

**But if you recognize yourself in these pages—if you feel something stirring inside—stop reading immediately. You might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before they sense it too, and they'll come for you.**

"That's creepy." Aphrodite said.

"It came from Philly. Of course it's creepy." Nico said. I wacked him.

**Don't say I didn't warn you.**

**My name is Philomela-Enyo Jackson, which is the stupidest name in the world, but hey, it's my name. But I swear if you call me Philomela-Enyo I will torture you to the brink of insanity. **

**Let's give that a minute to sink in.**

I looked around evilly then realized something, groaning.

"What?" Zeus asked.

"I just realized that everyone's going to know what I thought of them," I moaned. Everyone laughed.

**Cool. So since that intro sucked, I'm going to start over.**

**The name's Jackson. Philly Jackson.**

**I'm eight years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York.**

**Am I a troubled kid?**

"Yes" everyone in the room said.

"Thanks guys" I mumbled.

**Yeah. You could say that.**

"You agreed!" Nico told me. I glared.

**I could start at any point in my short miserable life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when my brother's sixth-grade class took a field trip to Manhattan— twenty-eight mental-case kids, a third-grader, and two teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.**

**I know—it sounds like torture.**

"Does not!" Annabeth and Athena protested.

**Most Yancy field trips were.**

**But Mr. Brunner, my brother's**** Latin teacher was leading this trip, so I had hopes.**

**Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool, but he told stories and jokes and let us play games in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman armor and weapons, s****o he was the only teacher whose class I put my real work aside to listen to.**

"Why are you in Percy's class?" Hades asked.

**I guess I should explain why I'm in my brother's class. **

**I was diagnoised with monophobia when I was five. So I have homework, I just shadow him and quietly do my work near him. I still get decent grades, a B average, not too shabby. Sometimes I fell like a burden on him.**

"Don't ever think that again," Percy said. I looked down and kept reading.

**Anyways, I hoped the trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.**

**Boy was I wrong.**

**See, bad things happen to us on field trips. Like at Percy's fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, we had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus, but of course we got expelled anyway.**

Everyone laughed.

"What were you aiming for?" Hermes asked.

Percy and I just looked at each other and evilly chuckled.

**And before that, at his fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, Percy sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim. And the time before that... Well, you get the idea.**

**This trip, I was determined to be good.**

"Not gonna happen," Nico muttered.

**All the way into the city, we put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded kleptomaniac girl, ****hitting our best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup sandwich.**

"Gross!" the girls all said.

"Hey, I thought I was your best friend," Nico pouted. I laughed.

"Don't worry Nico, you are," I smiled.

**Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades, because he was the only sixth grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled.**

"So telling!" Percy blackmailed, and I looked at him.

"Annabeth, when Percy first met you he tho-"

"Okay I won't!" he surrendered. I smirked and laughed evilly.

**He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria.**

People laughed.

"Those were some dang good enchiladas though," I reminised.

**Anyway, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew Percy couldn't do anything back to her because he was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened him with death by in-school suspension ****if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.**

**That doesn't mean I couldn't though.**

**"I'm going to kill her," I mumbled.**

"Do it!" Ares said.

**Grover tried to calm me down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."**

**He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.**

**"That's it." I started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat.**

**"Philly, leave it!" **

**"Percy's already on probation," he reminded me. "You know who'll get blamed if anything happens."**

**Looking back on it, I wish I'd punched the lights out of Nancy Bobofit right then and there.**

**In-school suspension would've been nothing compared to the mess I was about to get us into.**

"Cryptic much?"

**Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.**

**He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery.**

**It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years.**

"Longer," Athena and Annabeth chorused.

**He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, steel, for a girl about our age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. I was trying to listen to what he had to say, because it was kind of interesting, but everybody around me was talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other teacher chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye.**

**Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to ride a Harley right into your locker. **

**She had come to Yancy halfway through the year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown.**

"Wait, is that-" Annabeth started, but I held my finger up and tilted my head towards Nico. He would kill Hades if he found out. Thalia's eyes widened in recognition as well.

**From her first day, Mrs. Dodds loved Nancy Bobofit and figured Perce and I were devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after-school detention for a month.**

**One time, after she'd made us erase answers out of old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. He looked at me, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right."**

Poseidon eyed Hades suspiciously.

**Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.**

**Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the steel, ****and Percy and I turned around and said, "Will you shut up?"**

**It came out louder than we meant it to.**

**The whole group laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.**

**"Mr. and Ms. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"**

**Percy's face was totally red. I said, "No, sir."**

**Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?**

**I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief, because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"**

The elder Gods shuddered at the mention of that memory of that experience.

**"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied.**

**"And he did this because ..."**

**"Well..."Percy started. "Kronos was the king god,**

"GOD?!" Everyone screamed at Percy. I laughed at his reaction.

"I-I-I-"

**And—"**

**"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.**

**"Titan," I corrected for him. "And ... he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave Kronos a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters—"**

"Which I by the way think is really cool," I pointed out.

**"Eeew!" said one of the girls behind me.**

**"—and so there was this big fight between the gods and the Titans," Percy continued, "and the gods won."**

"You two just narrowed down hundreds of years into less than a minute." Poseidon said. I smirked, looking at Percy.

"Boo and yah," we said, high-fiving. Nico, Annabeth, and Thalia rolled their eyes.

**Some snickers from the group.**

**Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'Please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"**

**"And why, Mr. and Ms. Jackson," Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"**

"Busted!" Hermes said.

**"Busted," Grover muttered.**

We laughed.

**"Shut up," Nancy hissed her face even brighter red than her hair.**

**At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.**

**I thought about his question, and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."**

**"I see." Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"**

**The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses.**

"Don't all boys?" Artemis asked and Thalia nodded.

**Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. and Ms. Jackson."**

**I knew that was coming. We told Grover to keep going. Then we turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"**

**Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go— intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.**

**"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told us.**

**"About the Titans?"**

**"About real life. And how your studies apply to it."**

**"Oh."**

**"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Philly and Percy Jackson."**

"Again, why is your name always first!?" Percy

**I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed us so hard.**

**I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!'" and challenged us, sword-point against chalk, to run to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who had ever lived, and their mother, and what god they worshipped.**

"Really?" Zeus asked. We nodded.

**But Mr. Brunner expected Percy to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that we have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and he had never made above a C— in his life. No—he didn't expect us to be as good; he expected us to be better. And we just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly.**

**I mumbled something about trying harder, while Mr. Brunner took one long sad look at the steel, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.**

"Probably was" Hermes said.

**He told us to go outside and eat our lunch.**

**The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue.**

**Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured maybe it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas.**

**We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, and wildfires from lightning strikes. I wouldn't have been surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in.**

"Why are Poseidon and Zeus fighting?" Everyone asked. I looked at the ceiling, whistling.

"Subtle, sis."

**Nobody else seemed to notice. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers. Nancy Bobofit was trying to pickpocket something from a lady's purse, ****and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.**

Nico scrunched his eyebrows. I scooted away slightly.

**Grover, Percy, and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that maybe if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from that school—the school for loser freaks who couldn't make it elsewhere.**

"Did it work?" Apollo asked.

"Nope," we said, popping the p.

**"Detention?" Grover asked.**

**"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off Perce sometimes. I mean—he's not a genius."**

**"Hey!" my brother complained.**

**Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when I thought he was going to give us some deep philosophical comment to make us feel better, he said, "Can I have your apples?"**

People laughed.

"Seriously?" Nico snorted. I looked at Thalia.

"Gimme." I said. She rolled her eyes.

"Dang it Nico," she muttered. Everyone raised an eyebrow as she gave me ten bucks.

"I bet ten bucks that when Nico laughs, he snorts," I explained. Nico blushed as I sat next to him again.

**I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it.**

**I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was our sixth school in six years and we were probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me.**

"Awwwwwwwww" Aphrodite cooed.

"Momma's girl," Ares muttered. I glared at him.

"If she was your mom, you would be too."

**Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized cafe table.**

"I want one!" Hermes, Nico, and I yelled.

**I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy Bobofit appeared in front of me with her ugly friends—I guess she'd gotten tired of stealing from the tourists—and dumped her half-eaten lunch in Grover's lap.**

"Oooooooooh fight!" Ares said and threw his hands in the air.

**"Oops." She grinned at me with her crooked teeth. Her freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted her face with liquid Cheetos.**

**I tried to stay cool. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.**

**Percy tried to grab me, but I screeched and stood up.**

**"Ooh, the little freak's going to do something. Newsflash, no one wants you here, not even him," Nancy said pointing at Percy.**

**That was the last straw.**

**I balled up my tiny hands and pulled my arm back as far as I could, and socked her right in the middle of her face.**

"NICE!" Apollo and Ares cheered.

**Her face was busted, her eyes cross-eyed.**

**"Newsflash. Never. Bully. My Friends." I growled. **

**"Mrs. Dodds, Philly and Percy punched me!" she cried. **

**Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.**

**Some of the kids were whispering: "Did you see—"**

**"—Philly—"**

**"—just grabbed her—"**

"Sweet!" Apollo said.

**I knew was that I was in trouble again.**

**As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay, promising to get her a new shirt at the museum gift shop, because her stupid blood got on it, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if I'd done something she'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey—"**

**"I know," Percy grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks."**

Hermes groaned.

"Never guess your punishment!" Hermes said.

**That wasn't the right thing to say.**

**"Come with me," Mrs. Dodds said.**

**"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. I punched her."**

"Grover did that?" Thalia asked. I smiled, remembering.

**I stared at him, stunned. I couldn't believe he was trying to cover for me. Mrs. Dodds scared Grover to death.**

**She glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.**

**"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," she said.**

**"But—"**

**"You—will—stay—here."**

"She's evil," Percy muttered.

**Grover looked at us desperately.**

**"It's okay, man," I told him. "Thanks for trying."**

**"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked at me. "Now."**

**Nancy Bobofit smirked.**

**We gave her our deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stare.**

"That scared her?" Ares asked. We gave it to him and he shivered.

**Then we turned to face Mrs. Dodds, but she wasn't there. She was standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at me to come on.**

**How'd she get there so fast?**

**I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece fell out of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The school counselor told me this was part of the ADHD, my brain misinterpreting things.**

"Doubt it," Athena said.

**I wasn't so sure.**

**We went after Mrs. Dodds.**

**Halfway up the steps, I glanced back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between me and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, ****but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.**

**I looked back up. Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. She was now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.**

**Okay, I thought. She's going to make us buy a new shirt for Nancy at the gift shop.**

"Probably not" Poseidon said.

**But apparently that wasn't the plan.**

**I followed her deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.**

**Except for us, the gallery was empty. Percy held my hand.**

At that, Nico took mine, squeezing it.

**Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.**

"Growling?"

**Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it...**

"Probably did" Annabeth commented.

**"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.**

**I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."**

**She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"**

**The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.**

**She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.**

"Why do I have a feeling you're wrong?" Dad asked. I looked at him innocently.

**Percy said, "I'll—I'll try harder, ma'am."**

"That's not the right answer Percy"

**Thunder shook the building.**

**"We are not fools, Percy and Philly Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said. **

**"It was only a matter of time before we found you two out. Confess, and you will suffer less pain."**

**I didn't know what she was talking about.**

**All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy we'd been selling out of our dorm room.**

"NICE!" Nico high-fived me.

**Or maybe they'd realized Percy got his essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away his grade. Or worse, they were going to make him read the book.**

"It's not that bad!" Annabeth exclaimed.

"For you!" we shouted.

**"Well?" she demanded.**

**"Ma'am, I don't..."**

**"Your time is up," she hissed.**

**Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings and claws and a mouth full of yellow fangs, and she was about to slice us to ribbons.**

"You sent a fury at an eight year old girl and a twelve year old boy!" Nico said, glaring at Hades.

"Nico, we're fine." I told him. He huffed and pulled me close, so I was almost sitting on his lap. I leaned back as he played with the strands on the bottom. Nico's just overprotective of me, he has been since I met him. He'll calm down after a bit, as long as he knew I was still next to him. He plays with my hair a lot when he's worried about me. I wrapped one arm around him and continued to read.

**Then things got even stranger.**

**Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.**

**"What ho, Percy!" he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.**

"What's so special about a pen?" Artemis asked.

**Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.**

**With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. Percy snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit his hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword—Mr. Brunner's bronze sword, which he always used on tournament day.**

"Riptide" Percy said fondly.

**He then turned to me. "Use your necklace Philly!" I took the sword charm off, my hands shaking, and yelped as it turned into an actual sword, like Percy's. **

**Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.**

**My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.**

Nico's grip tightened significantly.

**She snarled, "Die, honey!"**

**And she flew straight at me.**

"Oh gods." Nico muttered and buried his face in my hair. I looked at everyone, who were staring at us.

"Are you two dating?" Dad asked.

I blushed. "No. He's just really overprotective, and when he gets nervous, he does this." I explained.

**Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.**

"Swinging a sword is natural?" Aphrodite asked.

**The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. Hisss!**

"**Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.**

We shivered and Nico held me closer. I didn't bother saying anything. It was nice anyways.

**We were alone.**

**There was a ballpoint pen in Percy's hand. My sword charm was on my necklace.**

**Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.**

**My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with magic mushrooms or something.**

"Magic mushrooms?" Hermes asked.

"They could exist!" I protested.

**Had I imagined the whole thing?**

**I went back outside.**

**It had started to rain.**

**Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy Bobofit was still standing there, soaked from her swim in the fountain, grumbling to her ugly friends. When she saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."**

"Who?" Athena asked. I laughed.

**I said, "Who?"**

**"Our teacher. Duh!"**

"Oh," everyone said.

**I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. Percy asked Nancy what she was talking about.**

"I never understood why you did that Perce," I said. He shrugged.

**She just rolled her eyes and turned away.**

**I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.**

**He said, "Who?"**

**But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.**

"He's the world's worst liar." I stated.

"True that." Percy said.

**"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."**

**Thunder boomed overhead.**

**I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.**

**We went over to him.**

**He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensil in the future, Mr. Jackson."**

"Only Chiron" Annabeth said.

**He handed Mr. Brunner his pen. I hadn't even realized he was still holding it.**

**"Sir," Percy said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"**

**He stared at us blankly. "Who?"**

**"The other chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher." I explained.**

**He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Philly, Percy,"**

"Ha!" I said. Nobody laughed though.

**"- there is no Mrs. Dodds on this trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling all right?"**

"That's the end." I stated.

"Alright, well, we have an apartment you five can stay at. You came during dinner, so I say we should continue in the morning." Athena concluded. Apollo led us to the apartment and we walked inside.

"Okay, there are three rooms. Me with Annabeth, Thalia gets her own, and Nico shares with Philly." I shrugged.

"Sure." I walked into a room and picked up an electric guitar. I started playing Animal I Have Become by Three Days Grace and Nico walked in.

"Do you want to make a video?" I shrugged.

"Why not?" We grabbed a video camera and he put it to face us, turning it on.

We played the song and I sang. At the end I turned to Nico smiling.

"I love that song." I stated.

"Come on, it's time for bed." He took my hand and led me to the bedroom. I took off my top shirt so I only had a tank top and my shorts. Nico took off his shirt and we laid down. I turned to face him and he smiled, but I knew it was fake.

"Nico, we're fine." He shivered and looked at me.

"I'm still going to kill him," he muttered.

"Nico," I said in a warning tone.

"Just go to sleep Angel. It's been a long day," he muttered sleepily, kissing my forehead.

"Night Nico." I smiled as he pulled me closer and wrapped his arms around me.

I fell asleep easily.


End file.
